


Wyoming

by saintsrow2



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 09:52:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18635767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsrow2/pseuds/saintsrow2
Summary: “When you’re trained, I’m collecting the money Forsythe owes me, and I’m hightailing it to California,” was one of the first things Tallahassee had told Ezra-Kane when they met in the dark, cramped bar that was their only option for drinks in the town of North Platte, the hometown of Randall & Forsythe’s. Ezra-Kane had decided he was not going to let himself get attached to Tallahassee if he was only going to be leaving soon, and completely failed to keep that promise. Ezra-Kane liked Tallahassee. He liked Tallahassee a lot.Ezra-Kane Pilgrim is still trying to find out where he wants to be after fleeing the Capital Wasteland and the failure of Project Purity. Working with a ghoul called Teddy Tallahassee for a courier company, he starts to realise maybe being alone isn't what he wanted.





	Wyoming

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for a zine, but that fell through, and I'm only getting around to posting it now. It's a couple of years old and a little rushed (zine space limits) but I still think it's got some value.

Tallahassee had told Ezra-Kane the state they were in was called Wyoming, but most of the locals didn’t call it anything. Not that Ezra-Kane spent much time talking to the locals; he left the talking to Tallahassee, who approached meeting new people with a delight akin to a career con-man introducing himself to someone very rich and very gullible. Talking to Tallahassee for the first time was enough to make you think you were the most fascinating and attractive person he’d ever had the joy of encountering, a trick that probably would have made him very popular with the rich, but did little but confuse the people of Wyoming. It was a sparsely populated land, people living on isolated farmsteads or in settlements of barely more than three or four families, and most of them didn’t have the time or inclination to deal with a tall ghoul in a cowboy hat who wanted to be their new best friend. 

“I really don’t know why you bother,” Ezra-Kane said one night when they were travelling back to the company HQ. They had stopped to rest at a random farm along the route, where a deeply suspicious family had given the two of them permission to sleep in their barn, on the condition that Ezra-Kane’s dogs didn’t bother the brahmin and that Tallahassee shut up.

“Not everyone I meet is gonna be my new best friend, I know,” Tallahassee said, leaning back against a bale of mostly dry hay. “But every now and again, you run into people worth talkin’ to.”

“Believe it when I see it.”

“Hey,” Tallahassee shrugged. “I found you.”

That shut Ezra-Kane up, his cheeks burning. He spent the night, as he always did, half asleep and half awake, his constant vigilance pulling him away from any deeper sleep at every sound. Every couple of hours he would wake with a start, roused by something as small as the wooden walls of the barn creaking or the dogs outside play-fighting. When he did, Ezra-Kane would just look to his left, where Tallahassee lay a few feet away in a dead sleep, and that was enough for Ezra-Kane’s heart to calm and for sleep to come a little easier.

The two of them had been working together for a few months. It was only a temporary arrangement, only until Ezra-Kane had been trained sufficiently well enough for John Forsythe of Randall & Forsythe’s to believe he was ready to be an independent guard and courier. When that would be, neither Tallahassee or Ezra-Kane knew.

“When you’re trained, I’m collecting the money Forsythe owes me, and I’m hightailing it to California,” was one of the first things Tallahassee had told Ezra-Kane when they met in the dark, cramped bar that was their only option for drinks in the town of North Platte, the hometown of Randall & Forsythe’s. Ezra-Kane had decided he was not going to let himself get attached to Tallahassee if he was only going to be leaving soon, and completely failed to keep that promise. Ezra-Kane liked Tallahassee. He liked Tallahassee a lot. 

Randall & Forsythe’s, on paper, was a company that hired out guards to caravans and couriers to people who needed someone to brave the Wyoming wilderness. In reality, a lot of what they did was kill people. Ezra-Kane preferred the jobs where he and Tallahassee would go out and kill someone, because then it could be just the two of them, without a trader to worry about. He had never learned to enjoy people; in general he viewed them with a mixture of suspicion and unearned hatred. He preferred being alone with his dogs, and continually told himself this every time he thought about how Tallahassee would be leaving soon, to try and crush the growing sadness that brought him.

On one long job, escorting some traders from one side of the state to the other with a chain of pack brahmin following them, Ezra-Kane saw just about everything Wyoming had to offer, and found it lacking. The landscape was ugly hard packed grey earth and rock, pockmarked by deep, craggy canyons and mountains, turning the entire land into a frozen sea of falling and rising rock. It was as true a wasteland as you could hope to find, precious few towns growing to have the size of somewhere like Megaton or Rivet City. Not that Megaton was much of a city anymore, Ezra-Kane always reminded himself. More of a smoking crater. 

As they made their way up the mountains on the edge of the state, they were able to look back over Wyoming, over the wide open terrain, where the brown rivers coursed like veins through the inhospitable land that people still tried to cling to, tried to fight for a life worth living. Ezra-Kane thought the people trying to live in the Capital Wasteland were kidding themselves, working an uphill battle against a slow and inevitable decline into the open maw of chaos and destruction the raiders threatened. He thought the people in Wyoming were insane.

“What’s the point of living here?” He asked Tallahassee, who was trying to set up camp for the night, putting together a campfire despite the steep wind coming down the side of the cliff.

“God knows, EK,” Tallahassee said. “Why the hell did you move here?”

“It’s not the Capital. There’s no Brotherhood. Why did you?”

“I joined up with Randall and Forsythe when they first started out… Would have been about fifteen years, now?” Tallahassee sat down next to the small fire he’d gotten started, gently encouraging it with a long, thin stick. Behind them, the traders were bedding down for the night by their brahmin, shooing the dogs away from their food. “They didn’t have two caps to rub together, so I started out workin’ for them on credit. Never left. But it’s time, now. Gotta move on.”

“Wait, fifteen years? They never paid you?”

“Paid room and board, and food, but not caps.”

“Tallahassee, that must be so much money… Forsythe’s never going to give it to you.”

Tallahassee looked up at Ezra-Kane. He’d pulled his guitar from his pack and was tuning it, fingers gliding over the strings and making a faint twanging tune that rolled out over the empty mountains and echoed back. 

“I’ll get my money,” Tallahassee said. “You have to have trust.”

“Trusting people is always a mistake.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“You’re leaving soon. It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Ezra-Kane sat on the edge of a large rock, one of the dogs lying heavily on his feet with a sigh. Ezra-Kane didn’t name most of his dogs; Tallahassee came up with a list of nicknames for them, but neither of them could remember who was what, so none of the dogs learned to respond to anything other than Ezra-Kane’s whistle. He had a half dozen of them; it was impossible for him to not pick up any dog he saw wandering on the side of the road. Tallahassee had told him that his urge to collect was cuter than the mutts themselves, which Ezra-Kane objected to vehemently.

“What’s keeping you here?” Tallahassee said. “Come with me.”

“I can’t. They’re only letting you go if you find a replacement.”

“So, wait until they say you’re ready to go full-time, then quit as soon as I’m out the door.”

Ezra-Kane laughed, had to, at Tallahassee’s audacity. “How can you say you have to have trust, then try to screw someone over?”  

“I guess I like you a lot more than I ever liked Forsythe.” Tallahassee shrugged, still smiling gently. “And you just seem a lot more goddamn sad than you deserve to be.”

“If I deserve anything, it’s unhappiness,” Ezra-Kane said.

“I’m gonna play a song,” Tallahassee said. “I call it, ‘what you just said was a load of bullshit, Ezra-Kane Pilgrim’. It’s a song for you.”

He began to strum the guitar. What Ezra-Kane knew about music would fit onto a single radroach wing, but when Tallahassee played, he found it impossible to look away. He sat by the fire that night, his cigarette burning down to the filter as he watched, not knowing what made this so different from every song he’d heard on the radio sung by dead singers from a hundred years ago, but still feeling the difference in the low, breathy sound of Tallahassee’s voice and the way goosebumps formed on his arms.

“You gotta think about what you want, EK,” Tallahassee said suddenly, still strumming.

“No one’s ever asked me before,” Ezra-Kane said.

“Well, I am.”

The sky above was black, no lights from any town enough to intrude on the thick darkness. Ezra-Kane thought about a city with enough light to keep the sky bright at night, and he thought about crawling into Tallahassee’s lap and kissing him until his lips bruised. He thought about a town with hundreds of people living their lives in the freedom and comfort they wouldn’t lose it all to the sudden whims of a raider, and he thought about waking up in a bed with Tallahassee by his side. But he said;

“A quiet place to live. Someone to live with.”

Tallahassee’s smile was soft, his eyes filled with some great tenderness. Ezra-Kane desperately wished what he’d said was true. 

“You’re a good person,” Tallahassee said. 

“No, I’m not.” 

“All people are good people. Just some folks make bad decisions.”

“What if someone always makes bad decisions? Every time?” 

“Maybe they just need a little help.”

When they arrived at Randall & Forsythe’s a few days later, having escorted the traders to the snow-plagued town of Jackson and back again, Ezra-Kane went to see Forsythe himself. He had spent very little time with the now solo boss of Randall & Forsythe’s, only to pick up assignments and be continually told he wasn’t ready to be full-time. The old ghoul who ran the company treated everyone with a dismissiveness that drove Ezra-Kane nuts and bothered Tallahassee about as much as the actions of a single bloatfly interested God. He didn’t look particularly happy to see Ezra-Kane in his office.

“You have to let Tallahassee go,” Ezra-Kane said.

“I thought you liked working with him?” Forsythe said.

“I do. But he wants to leave. You have to let him go.”

Forsythe sighed heavily and closed the accounts book he was reading. He fixed Ezra-Kane with a cold glare and told him, on no uncertain terms; no.

“We owe Teddy more money than the company has in its accounts. I’d be nuts to pay him off.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“Wait until he gets tired of waiting and leaves, or have him killed, probably.”

Ezra-Kane thought about Tallahassee sitting by the fire, his perpetual, always warm smile and the gentleness in his eyes, and how he’d said trust would get him the money. And then Ezra-Kane thought that maybe Tallahassee’s trust in Forsythe was misplaced, but Tallahassee’s trust in him wouldn’t be. So, Ezra-Kane decided to act on his own initiative, and shot John Forsythe through the head at point blank range with the 10mm handgun on his hip. Then, knowing there was a very good chance that other people either heard the shot or heard Forsythe’s skull hitting the top of the desk with a bang, he took the time to painfully, slowly, pick open the safe on the floor under Forsythe’s feet. He took the bag of caps and the gold bars inside, placed them in his own pack and went to find Tallahassee.

He found Tallahassee in the bar down the street from the office, in their usual seat, and slid into the chair opposite him. Tallahassee gave him a bottle of beer he’d ordered for him, but Ezra-Kane did not stop to drink it, just dumped the bag on the table with a loud, metal clunk.

“What’s that?” Tallahassee said.

“It’s the money Forsythe owes you,” Ezra-Kane said. 

Tallahassee laughed, then looked inside the bag and hummed a note of surprise. He closed it.

“I’m guessin’ he didn’t give that to you of his own volition.”

“Tell me about California,” Ezra-Kane said.

“It’s been taken over the NCR. They started out with this little place called Shady Sands, but they grew and grew. It’s been standing for over a hundred years, now. They took the world after the war, and started over. That’s the good thing about the world, now. People lost everything, and they started over.”

“I lost everything.”

“You don’t have to lose me too,” Tallahassee said. “For whatever that’s worth.”

“It’s worth all the caps in this bag.” 

Tallahassee laughed again, took Ezra-Kane’s hand in his, and pulled him out of his seat. “Then let’s get the hell out of here before someone finds out what we’ve done.”

They grabbed the bag, grabbed Ezra-Kane’s dogs, and didn’t look back. As they walked, leaving North Platte behind them, Ezra-Kane thought about how he’d run out of the Capital Wasteland alone, in fear of the things that he’d done. Far away, the ruins of Project Purity rotted inside the Jefferson Memorial, and the halls of Vault 101 were home to nothing but the breeding swarms of radroaches, the ruins of things that Ezra-Kane had never wanted and never asked for.

When they stopped to sleep that night, resting under the open skies with their packs as pillows and coats as blankets, Ezra-Kane rested his head on Tallahassee’s shoulder and slept the whole night through. 


End file.
